


last year's rain

by obstinate_as_an_allegory



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 03:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20482016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinate_as_an_allegory/pseuds/obstinate_as_an_allegory
Summary: 1981. A wet summer. There’s a traitor in the Order.1975. A dry summer. Peter Pettigrew dreams of joining the Quidditch team.How friends make and break one another, in two snapshots.





	last year's rain

**1981 **

Peter hunches his shoulders and looks sullenly down into his pint. It’s a pretty sullen pint, James considers; only kind they sell in this dingy pub Wormtail chose. It’s his first night out in weeks, and he’s beginning to wish Padfoot had been free – he has better taste in boozers. This place is so full of misery he can feel it seeping in through his pores. Not to mention, the place is so dirty the grime already seems to be clouding the lenses of his glasses.

‘You heard all this about a traitor in the order, eh?’ Peter says, a little too fast and a little breathless. James sympathises. The idea makes him feel sick, too.

‘I heard something about it,’ he mumbles. ‘Listen, Pete, can we talk about something else?’

Peter blinks, and shrugs awkwardly. ‘Mm. ‘Course. S’just, you know…’ he slurps a bit of his pint, swirling it round his mouth thoughtfully. ‘Makes you look at people differently.’

‘S’pose so. Listen, mate, have you heard the Quidditch scores?’

Peter isn’t much of a Quidditch enthusiast, actually, but he’s got an amazing memory for trivia, and for some reason best known to himself, he nearly always knows the state of the league and can reel off scores for a week’s worth of matches. It’s really Pete’s very best party trick – apart from turning into a rat, of course, which he isn’t supposed to do except at very exclusive parties.

‘Harpies Cannons ended in a tie at one-sixty all. Warriors beat Kelpies four-seventy to three-fifty at the end of a two-day match.’

‘I had tickets for that one,’ James says gloomily.

Pete flashes him a quick commiserating smile. ‘Bit of a long drawn-out match, the _Prophet _said.’

James sighs. Missing Quidditch matches is really one of the worst parts of war.

‘Order business, was it?’ Pete says hesitantly.

They’re not really supposed to exchange information about missions. Still, it’s just Pete.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Sat in a ditch all night watching some library they thought was a Death Eater hideout. Bloody waste of time. Lily said I smelled of ditch when I came in and wouldn’t let me in bed until I’d bathed. Not my idea of a good night out.’

‘Doesn’t sound much fun,’ Peter allows, eyes on his drink again. ‘Did you – you know – see anyone?’

‘Not a bean,’ says James, and Pete relaxes a bit.

They both drink deeply before speaking again. ‘Must be pretty scary, going on missions, knowing there’s a spy in the Order,’ Pete says eventually. James tries not to wince. It’s a sore topic, but Pete’s never exactly been the most tactful bloke.

‘Mm,’ he grunts, hoping for a change of subject.

‘You have any – you know – ideas about who it might be?’

James looks up quickly, taken by surprise. ‘I – no. There’s loads of people in the Order, I don’t know all of them that well. Could be –‘ He falters; he’s not willing even to name possibilities. ‘Well, I s’pose there’s a lot of people it could be.’

‘Could be someone we know though,’ Peter presses, his voice a bit strangled like he doesn’t like the idea any better than James does. James wishes he’d stop bloody talking about it then, but he’s right out of luck, because the next thing Peter says leaves him gaping like a fish.

‘D’you ever think - maybe it could be Padfoot?’

James tips beer down his front, so startled he forgets where his mouth is. ‘What?’ he chokes eventually, mopping fruitlessly at his shirt. ‘What could be?’

Peter shuffles closer, his chair’s legs scraping loudly against the floor.

‘The _traitor_,’ he hisses. He looks really shifty now, shoulders curled around his pint.

‘You taking the _piss_, mate?’ James gasps eventually. ‘That’s not fucking funny.’ He gives up the shirt for a dead loss, scowling. ‘Don’t joke about that stuff.’

Peter shifts and resettles his fingers around his glass. ‘I’m not – Prongs, I’m seriou… I mean, I’m not joking. I know it’s not easy to think about, but, like…’ He moves his chair closer again, and it clunks against the table. ‘You know about his family. He’s got a lot of, you know, contacts, on the other side. You’ve got to at least admit…’

‘_Padfoot_?’ James still doesn’t really feel capable of stringing a sentence together. He feels cold and numb, a hollow in his chest that’s spreading outwards to envelop him. He’s never been so disappointed in anyone in his life, not even Sirius, that time he almost got three people killed.

‘Yeah, you know. It’s in his blood, isn’t it? Dark magic. And you know what he tried to do to Snape that time.’

‘Don’t fucking bring that up, Wormtail, I-‘

‘I’m just _saying_. We know it’s _someone. _And _we_-‘ he makes an urgent gesture between the two of them, bent so far forward over the table that its edge is sunk deep in his midriff. ‘_We _know someone who has contacts on the other side, and who has a history of giving away secrets. And you know, he’s good at that Dark stuff.’

‘He’s good at _Defence_,’ James snaps, because he’s impatient with having to listen to this. The Snape thing was the worst thing that ever happened to him, or to Moony, or really to Sirius as well, once he’d come out of his mad reckless stupor enough to realise what he’d done. But it was _years _ago now, literally years, and a lot of stuff has happened since then. It isn’t Pete’s fault he wasn’t there for most of it, but for fuck’s sake.

‘The traitor’s not fucking Padfoot, alright?’ he says, invoking the voice he used to use to put his foot down when Sirius had an idea that was too mad, or when Moony had one that was too sane.

‘You got to _think _about it, though, Prongs…’

‘What the fuck’s brought this on, Wormtail?’

‘I’ve just been thinking a lot… you know how many of his cousins are Death Eaters?’

James does know. He sees them every now and then; there’ve been skirmishes. They always go for Sirius viciously if he’s there, two weeks ago one of his Malfoy relations got him with a cutting hex and James vividly remembers the feeling of Sirius’ blood under his own fingernails and flaking off his palms. Does Wormtail _really _think that’s the sort of thing Death Eaters would do to someone who’s secretly in league with them?

He would tell Peter about it to make him shut up with his suspicions, but he’s not supposed to talk about Order business with anyone non-essential, and, well…

‘You do know Padfoot’s the worst sodding liar in wizarding London?’ he demands instead. ‘Mary MacDonald would make a better double agent than he would.’

‘It could be a bluff,’ Peter says stubbornly. ‘He’s not that bad a liar. He had me convinced that time about the vanishing custard.’

James snorts at the reminder. ‘Sod off,’ he says, hoping they’ve perhaps edged back into jokey territory. He’s disappointed.

‘I’m just saying _think _about it,’ Peter insists. ‘We do know there’s a traitor, and obviously _we _love Sirius, but he _has _got the Dark Arts in his blood.’

James stands abruptly, his chair scraping noisily against the floor. ‘Shut up about it, alright, Wormtail? In his _blood_? That’s exactly the same rubbish that Voldemort’s lot are on about, everyone’s value decided by blood. And his fucked up family isn’t Padfoot’s fucking fault.’ He feels pleasantly fired up from defending Sirius, at last doing so vehemently enough that Peter doesn’t immediately respond. He doesn’t admit he’s wrong, either, which is more than a little disappointing.

James glares at him. ‘I should get back.’

‘You didn’t finish your pint,’ Pete says. ‘We can talk about something else, if you want.’

James refuses curtly. He feels more shaken than he has in ages – not that he’s doubting Padfoot, his brain is so hardwired with loyalty to his adoptive brother that he doesn’t actually think he’s capable of the thought. Still, though. He’d never have expected this from Wormtail.

**1975**

‘I think there’s something wrong with this broom.’

No response. He drops his arm and looks over his shoulder at Sirius, who has stretched out on the grass with both hands propped behind his head.

‘I said, I think there’s something wrong with the broom.’

Sirius stretches one arm out before bringing his hand to shade his eyes. ‘Looks alright,’ he says, somehow managing to convey the sense of a shrug while full length on the grass.

Peter shuffles his feet, straightens his spine, stretches out his arm again and says, ‘Up!’

The broom flops over on the ground wearily.

He spins to Sirius, waving his arms vigorously. ‘See?’

‘Hmm?’ 

Sirius props himself up on his elbows and gives Peter and the broom a disinterested look.

‘Just stick to what you’re good at, Wormtail.’ Sirius idly picks a piece of grass and threads it between his long fingers.

Peter glares at the recalcitrant broom and gives it a clumsy kick for good measure. He feels a bit stupid when the thing barely even moves, but Sirius has his eyes closed to the sun. ‘M’not _good_at anything,’ he grumbles, mostly because he’s hoping to be contradicted, though he should know better than to seek warm reassurances from Sirius Black. Sirius ignores him, and reaches out lazily to pluck a couple of daisies out of the grass. Peter sighs heavily and flumps down next to him.

‘I’m not good at anything,’ he repeats quietly, because he’s always believed in trying again; people who aren’t good at anything have to.

‘Fuck off, Wormtail. Who needs the sodding Quidditch team anyway?’

‘I don’t care about the Quidditch team,’ he lies. Sirius is making a fucking daisy chain. Anyone else making a daisy chain would attract merciless ribbing, but Sirius projects such an unbreakable air of not giving a toss, _and _is so unpredictable in his responses that ribbing him is quite frequently dangerous: he can get away with doing more or less whatever he likes.

‘Fine then,’ he says, tilting his head back so the sun gleams off the line of his throat. Peter hates him sometimes.

‘I don’t care about Quidditch,’ he repeats, ‘but I just wish there was _something _I was good at.’

‘Gobstones,’ Sirius says, as if it’s the final incontrovertible term of a long line of reasoning. ‘Pretty good at Gobstones.’

‘I only win because James always gets distracted in the middle of the game.’

‘So that’s your talent. Ability to stay interested in a game as fucking boring as Gobstones for long enough to win.’

Peter scowls at him, but he barely notices.

‘Here you go. Here’s your prize.’ He drops the daisy chain onto Peter’s head and hauls himself to his feet. ‘Put the broom away on your way back, yeah?’

Peter sits and watches him lope off, grinning, toward the distant figure of Remus emerging from the castle gate. Once they’re out of sight, he stumbles upright. On his way out of the broom shed he passes Mulciber and Avery, who snort at the sight of him. ‘Looking very pretty there, Pettigrew.’

He snatches the daisy chain off his head as if it’s scalding him, but too late. That night at dinner, Sirius has the nerve to ask him why the Slytherins are chanting ‘Pretty, Pretty Pettigrew’ at him.


End file.
